Another shoe dropped for a Colorado Crush veteran Wednesday, as the Arena Football League team announced that lineman Dustin Barno had been released.

“I just didn’t think he was playing at the level he had over the last couple of years,” Crush coach Mike Dailey said of Barno. “He had an injury in an early game and he was fighting back through that. He was a high-dollar guy on the salary cap. In trying to manage the number of injuries we’ve had, and always being a team with a short roster, it was a way for us to increase the number of players we could deactivate.”

Injured reserve is another way of handling injuries, but when going that route, players are lost for four weeks.

Barno was an original member of the Crush, joining the AFL expansion team in 2004. During his first three seasons he played on offense and defense, but had primarily played defense the last two seasons.

Because of the number of injuries, Dailey expects to have 10 rookies in uniform when the Crush (3-5) plays the Grand Rapids Rampage (3-5) at 7 p.m. Friday at the Pepsi Center. Kicker Deric Yaussi, from Poudre High School in Fort Collins and the University of Wyoming, and lineman Lauvale Sape, from the University of Utah, are newcomers to the Crush roster.

With Barno gone, only six players remain on the Crush roster from the 2005 ArenaBowl championship team. Still with the Crush are Rush, quarterback John Dutton, defensive backs Rashad Floyd and Delvin Hughley, lineman Kyle Moore-Brown, and Chris Watton, who has been moved from the line to fullback.